Paint Schoodic

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Sunday, May 19, 2013

The old folks flit, the young fly home

Drawing by Kamillah Ramos, an architecture student at SUNY Buffalo

I’m always a bit shocked when my former students return from
college, for every year they come home with more mature features and more adult
demeanor. May is the month when seasoned students flit and youngsters fly
home, at least for a little while.

The water is much clearer than last month. The train still barrels right over the falls, however.

On Saturday, I had several of them with me on the Pont de
Rennes bridge. It was significantly warmer than when Carol Thiel and I painted
there last month, and the water is far clearer now that we’ve passed the
April freshets.

Teressa drawing. (Photo courtesy of Kamillah Ramos)

If I have a theme I harp on over and over it’s the power of
drawing. Drawings aren’t precious; recognizing that gives us the freedom to take
chances, to screw up. The fear of failing is the most debilitating thing in the
artistic process, so there’s freedom in the common #2 pencil. Drawing first
allows an artist to focus on observation, making the painting phase far more
fluid.

It was windy again Saturday, hence the water-bottle counterweight. (Photo courtesy of Kamillah Ramos)

So it wasn’t exactly a surprise that most of my students
were drawing. All that industrial architecture was crying out for a pencil. And
I was blown away by how much my college-age kids’ drawing had matured, along
with their faces and their demeanor.

Bella tried watercolor for the first time.

Moved almost to tears by their growth I was—until I noticed
two of them spitting over the rail. “We’re studying aerodynamics,” they
explained.

OK, maybe one more year…

And Kamillah herself.

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Any resemblance between these two is completely coincidental.

PS. This was in yesterday's Democrat and Chronicle. It was our class in Highland Park two weeks ago: